What's the least ecologically harmful way to source rock?

I need some rock.  I'm well aware that the rocks in a creek bed for example can be extremely important both for habitat and stabilizing the stream from erosion.  But taking them from a hillside could also destabilize the slope and lead to erosion.  There's probably no way to take rocks from the landscape without some kind of negative impact.  But what ways are better than others?  Or should we perhaps just not do this at all and only salvage rock from abandoned human infrastructure / rubble?

Here's a list of some potential sources in my area, roughly ordered by my uneducated and likely wrong guess at how bad it is - with the worst at the end.

- from a mess left by previous human activity - not in its natural place  (this is probably the only one I wouldn't hesitate much on)
- on surface of relatively flat land, rock is not holding back any soil (this would include rocks that had come up from previous digging)
- from the bottom of a landslide for example along a road cut (assuming rock is loose and not holding anything back)
- in a lake or pond (may mess with habitat but won't cause erosion?)
- on the beach of ocean (may mess with habitat but won't cause erosion?)
- on top of a ridge
- on a gentle slope
- on a steep slope
- in a river
- in a creek
- in a gully or ephemeral stream
- underneath the soil (i.e., you dig down to get the rock)
- from a commercial quarry (maybe this is less bad since the area is already disturbed, but I figure you're paying them to dig more of the mountain away so eh)

How would you think about this?


In my case I'm looking for around one ton of rock to pile behind my woodstove for thermal mass.  50-80lb rocks so they're big but not too heavy to lift.  But regardless of my purpose, I feel like this is a more general question so I'd appreciate general responses.

Dig a pond.  Use a screen to sift the dirt out.  A screen can be made from hardware cloth.

One ton of rock is an awful lot to try to source from digging a pond.

One ton of rock from any source will take a lot of labor and time.

Buy rock from the commercial rock quarry or put an ad on Craigs' list for someone looking to have rock hauled away if you have the means to haul rock.

That was our problem, the local rock quarry does not haul rock.  And they are just down the road from us.

Excellent question! Don't know what's least harmful, and I suppose it depends a lot on the specific situation. We recently gathered a whole lot of rocks (somewhere around the quantities you're looking for, I imagine) for use in the foundations of our future cabin. Our most accessible source of rocks (that doesn't require digging) is the creek, so that's mainly what we used. We did try to take rocks from the parts of the streambed that we want to make deeper, especially in a spot where we'll dig a pond. That way, instead of counting it only as "messing up habitat" we can also count it as "contribution towards creating another habitat, which is lacking in our specific situation, and increasing the water-holding capacity of the land". So basically function stacking, I guess.

We also stacked functions a bit for sourcing the gravel that went into the foundations. The hole where we took it will be our future root cellar...

Hah, Anne, you beat me to the pond idea

Eino Kenttä wrote:Hah, Anne, you beat me to the pond idea

I feel that is what the guy that we bought our property from did.

Since the pond will not hold water unless I use the unsustainable way most Texans do by adding water from the aquifer.

We put the rock back in the pond using our tractor whenever we have to move rocks.

You have a great idea regarding making the creek deeper.

I often see them on the roadside but its a slow way to collect them!
What size do you have in mind 2 "

Rock material is heavy so to avoid transportation the best is to find its source on your property. Whenever a castle was built local stone had to be on site, same for stone houses anywhere. The best would be to use stones that are already on the ground, but they maybe of inferior quality because of weathering. One ton of rock is nothing, assuming that average specific gravity for popular stones is 2.5 then it's only 400 liters - a little over 100 gallons.

I might put beach further down on your list. Littoral erosion is super complicated and will change, for better or for worse, when you add or remove hard materials. Regardless, the rocks are an important habitat.

On trail crew, we take rocks from slopes all the time, but are told never to take from stream/creek/riverbeds. Doesn't mean that's the best way to do it of course, but I've always figured it's because stream beds are sensitive. We also dig up rocks.

A ton of rock really is not a lot

A cubic yard of dirt weighs 3000 pounds or a ton and a half. That is only three buckets worth of a small farm tractor

I would gather from roadside ditches. You might only take a few to a time but it adds up. If you take a dozen rocks everyday in your car, in two weeks you’ll have enough.

I once had to move 350 cubic yards of gravel and had a 1 yard dump trailer. It did not seem possible until I broke it down. 10, 1 cubic yard trips per day, means we moved 350 yards in just over a month.

A lot of productivity can be done with a little, more often.

Yeah, 1000 pounds at 50-80 pounds each is only 20 to as few as 12 stones.
You might try Craigslist ads for "free stones/rocks", as far as impact goes, you'd be making an impact in someone's life that wanted some stones gone... and they are likely determined to do so with or without your help, so there.
It's also not as likely to be taken from an existing "natural habitat", as collecting from a beach, stream bed, etc...?
And the stones wouldn't have been removed solely for your benefit... like from a quarry, or a landscape supply.

Other options might be salvaged concrete blocks, or rubble, or clay bricks; some of which have the benefit of regular/rectangular shapes designed for stacking.

When I first needed lots of rocks to build a retaining wall as part of a building project I was doing I was talking about it with the fellow whose business was doing my UPS shipping for me at the time.  He lived in an old farm house on some acreage and told me I could come get rocks from a big rock pile on his property.  He even had a heavy duty trailer I could pile them onto which he'd then drive to my place for me to unload.  I got several tons of rocks that way.  It was hard sweaty work!

If you are in a rural area where the soil naturally has rocks in it odds are pretty good that every farm field around you will have one or more rock piles off to the side of it where generations of farmers have been piling up rocks as they rise up in their fields.  Now granted it would be much nice if they didn't plow and till the land, but used a good no till approach, but that's not our recent history, nor is it something adopted by most farmers (around me anyway).  

If I had wanted smaller stones, what they call potato rocks as they are potato sized and gleaned off the fields when they harvest potatoes, this same fellow could have hooked me up with farmers he knew who would have been more than happy to dump me 18 yard loads of potato stones for just the price of the fuel their trucks would need to drive them to me.  I kinda wish now I had gotten a load or two while I still had that personal connection, but I wanted larger sized stones.

Later, as I had more financial resources and needed larger quantities of rocks for other projects I did start getting them from a local quarry that mostly did gravel but would pull out the larger stones/boulders as they found them.

Due to the steady decline of rock populations, the U.S. Department of Quarries requires harvesting only rocks with a dimension larger than 8 inches. If smaller than that, they must be returned to the earth so that they can mature and spawn.

Dc Stewart wrote:Due to the steady decline of rock populations, the U.S. Department of Quarries requires harvesting only rocks with a dimension larger than 8 inches. If smaller than that, they must be returned to the earth so that they can mature and spawn.

Haha.  I think most farmers around here would say they spawn quite well!

I know here in New England the rocks are all sharp because despite the farmers putting condoms on the bigger ones, they must get tears in them because the maternity ward (fields) are littered with their offspring. Every time I had to pick rocks growing up (the worst chore there was on a farm) I swore they were born as twins, triplets or sextuplets even.

The teenage rocks, they are no better; darting off their rock walls on the weekend and sneaking off to some far-flung field to "park", making for even more babies to pick the following year.

I have a creek running through my property, 10 miles long above where it enters, that is an inexhaustible supply of rocks. I used to be careful about harvesting, but in recent decades, starting with Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and the simultaneous building of an interstate highway over the headwaters, the streambed has destabilized so much that no matter how much I take now, more washes down with the next big storm. The creek does cut down to bedrock at the upper end of my property, so I am not affecting upstream conditions by harvesting, just keeping some of the rock and gravel from going into the river a quarter mile away.

There is the remains of a 19th century gas pipeline that crosses the creek at the top of the property, and the streambed still had the shingled riprap the builders had put downstream of it when I was a teenager, as well as many areas of tussock grass anchoring the stones of the bed. That is long gone now and the streambed changes with every storm. The biggest storms can move rocks several feet across, and have carried 80' tall pine trees roots and all from above my property right through to the river flat. So I don't feel bad about taking some for my use.

In my case I get a lot of rocks as a result of erosion. They come off of the mountain during typhoons and down into the drainage streams. They must be cleared otherwise they will flood the village. Solving the erosion in this case needs to be done by improved forestry practices.

Similarly anytime land is being cleared or worked the construction crews typically haul off tons of rock and urbanite. I believe they tend to use it as fill material in future projects.

I would favor rock byproducts of activity that people are already doing and you can't really stop, especially if the activity has a net benefit like organic farming or similar.

Interesting thread not sure if it matters on my land if I take rocks from one location and add them to another as far as erosion goes . I haven't really noticed any erosion from removing rocks unless I was removing rocks from a very steep freshly graded embankment. then yes the Rocks I would pull out would cause some erosion but not in a way that would change the landscape . And not as much as the deers climbing these embankment . And if large Stones were pulled out of wooded areas it did not seem to cause any erosion the holes will just fill in with Leaf litter and sticks after a while if I did not fill them in with dirt . Bears seem to pull the big rocks up looking for bugs and so they continue to move down the hills . I don't see any erosion happening from the Bears moving  the rocks either if anybody was curious. I'm reading these threads about rocks because of a project I'm starting soon . going to be learning how to build with stone so if anyone knows of a great book for learning how to properly build walls for a building I would really appreciate any help or Direction y'all could give me . On my property I found 15 large piles of stones a pile would fill the bed of a truck.  going down a hill in a line. And also about three or four other similar piles that were not included in the line but off to the side. There are similar rocks spread across the whole property and much larger rocks that are terribly difficult to move . these rocks are located in very thick woods with very old trees it's still a mystery what they were for or how they got there . they were gathered I just don't know by whom . Someone told me I need to use a metal detector over these Mounds funny they suspect some hidden treasure or even better bones. I expect nasty Critters that like to live under rocks yay. And to me the rocks so conveniently gathered and placed in piles is the treasure.

Piles of rocks would have been cleared from fields by farmers as they worked the land. Abandoned fields go back to forest in just a few decades as long as the climate is moist enough for trees to grow easily, and if your land was abandoned a century or more ago, you could have thick forest now.

You're welcome to come to my place and pick out all of the rock that a previous owner put in place as mulch :)

I got an SUV load of old pavers that a neighbor didn't want and an invitation to come back for more about a year ago. You can probably find someone who is looking to give away landscaping rocks if you look around.

One thing that surprised me when I was looking for old concrete to use as pavers was how much of that actually gets recycled in my area.